Adblock Edge

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Pinga, Oct 1, 2012.

  1. safeguy

    safeguy Registered Member

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    To be fair, there's also academic works that shows the benefits and value of advertising. If you're into business/marketing, you'll note that not everything is bad in the advertising world. E.g. Advertising is one of the factors of economic growth. Advertising also provides information that is simple for consumers to get hold of (reliability and accuracy is a different topic).

    Basics of Ying-Yang principle and Newton's third law: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.

    Alternatives exist for many things. Switching to alternatives is a fine idea in principle. However for every alternative, we have to do a cost–benefit analysis. If the benefits outweight the cost, sure why not?

    Now, what if it isn't? Despite the shortcomings, if the current model is working for a person or organization (in this context, bringing in revenue to the web owners), why not try to improve upon the current model itself first?

    As for innovation, easier said than done. Assuming the 'innovative' idea is there, things to consider:

    1. Resource available?
    2. Time to implement?
    3. How to go about disseminating info on the new 'innovative' method?
    4. Will the potential targets adopt and adapt?

    Bear in mind that web owners are not necessarily the most innovative people on the planet. It's human nature to stick to what provides them with revenue currently. A hungry man is not a free man.

    The problem ultimately lies in the mentality. Most people are only interested in their benefits without considering others.

    Consumers: "decide what we do and do not want to see"
    Web owners : "decide what we do and do want to show"

    Basically, this results in a social trap. That's why a compromise is being looked upon as a possible direction in ABP. It's not everyone's cup of tea I admit but this is far from injustice or evil.

    1. It's 'opt-in'. So if you're an 'opt-in' advocate, rejoice.
    2. It's a form of support. A form of revenue model. Revenue model does not equate to corruption.
    3. Look up the definition of corruption. Yeah, Wikipedia has a page on it.
     
  2. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Registered Member

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    Exactly.

    WordPress has a great model - I can host my site with them for free, indefinitely. There are downsides to this, like my url being .wordpress.com, which makes linking kinda weird through twitter etc. I also don't have control over the server, etc. But it's entirely free.

    That's a really innovative model.

    But what if I want to host it myself? If ads didn't exist I'd be paying 20 bucks a month out of pocket (well, not me personally as I get free hosting, but someone). So my option is then... what? Innovate? Sounds a bit capitalist to me! It's very "No handouts! Pick yourself up by your bootstraps!", very ironic mentality given the context.

    Ads allow people to get their own websites. It's that simple. Other models can exist, but there's a good reason they rarely come up.
     
  3. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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    Nice :)
    That remains to be seen. The predominant powers on the Internet have one thing in common - they tend to stifle competition as a result of their bottom-line focus.

    The old dichotomy of corporate vs. open source is softening. Mozilla - first integrating Google, now Facebook functionality into their projects - is an example. We're even seeing this convergence of contradictory and potentially conflicting interests in extensions such as Adblock Plus or Ghostery now - blurring the lines in many ways.

    So I think these developments deserve critical scrutiny. When Wladimir Palant starts spinning his story along the lines of
    it's easy to see why Adblock Edge hit a nerve.
     
  4. UnknownK

    UnknownK Registered Member

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    Well I just replaced adblock plus with edge. Edge is more in line with my philosophy of absolute ad free internet.
     
  5. ams963

    ams963 Registered Member

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    No reason to switch. I'm not that lazy. I can remove a check mark.:D
     
  6. internet addict

    internet addict Registered Member

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    I use it, and I like it.
     
  7. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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    It it is less adventurous than the original:
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/reviews/
     
  8. Codify

    Codify Registered Member

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    Not just that:

    - Remove a check mark to get it to actually block ads
    - Remove a check mark to stop it from "redirecting" the URLs I type and prevent it from injecting Amazon affiliate links
    - Click an X in the menu to remove the banner ad pleading me to "contribute to Adblock Plus" (I have donated in the past btw)​

    Sure, it's still only three clicks, but it's three clicks too many. With the pace Wlad is adding bloat to his extension ("typo corrector" this time, probably an email client and music library next time), there will be may more clicks to come.

    I'm not throwing a "hissy fit." The beauty of open source is that we have a choice. I choose the clean unbloated fork. You are free to carry on clicking and unchecking tickboxes in an attempt to get the extension to do what it is supposed to do. That's fine.
     
  9. Wild Hunter

    Wild Hunter Former Poster

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    You are talking nonsense. These extra features aren't enabled by default on ADB+, they are optional. The clicks aren't necessary, the mentioned checkboxes come cleared by default.
     
  10. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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    You should try to behave.

    It is worth noting that Palant is not the original developer of Adblock, he picked up the project quite some time after its inception. So the 'theft' argument doesn't make much sense: Forking usually makes things better for everyone.
    http://adblock.mozdev.org/
     
  11. TheWindBringeth

    TheWindBringeth Registered Member

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    I believe the "acceptable ads subscription" (see http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#criteria etc for the criteria, note the lack of privacy criteria) is automatically enabled if the user hasn't created custom filters and/or added one of these "privacy related" subscriptions:

    easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy+easylist.txt
    easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.txt
    secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-tracking.txt
    fanboy-adblock-list.googlecode.com/hg/fanboy-adblocklist-stats.txt
    bitbucket.org/fanboy/fanboyadblock/raw/tip/fanboy-adblocklist-stats.txt
    hg01.codeplex.com/fanboyadblock/raw-file/tip/fanboy-adblocklist-stats.txt
    adversity.googlecode.com/hg/Adversity-Tracking.txt

    Even those who have should double check the setting. So there would be some contexts where the user has to uncheck the "allow non-intrusive advertising" option in order for Adblock Plus to block (all of) the ads described by their chosen subscriptions.

    WRT the typo correction feature, I don't think the redirection mechanism is enabled by default but the checking and "It seems you meant... would you like to correct typos... yes|no" prompt are. So unless you want to repetitively see that prompt you'll have to respond to it or set extensions.adblockplus.correctTyposAsked to true. Those wanting to be alerted to what Adblock Plus thinks are typos... some of which will be corrected through other mechanisms, for example Amazon owning some of the domain names associated with misspellings and redirecting typos itself... might want to leave the question unanswered.

    The "contribute button" is displayed in the UI by default and if you don't want to see that you have to check the associated hide button or set extensions.adblockplus.hideContributeButton to true. I personally don't have any objections to this one. I'm just hoping to add clarification to the recent comments.
     
  12. Wild Hunter

    Wild Hunter Former Poster

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    There is a big difference, those devs abandoned the project. Palant didn't. He is actively working on it.

    BTW, the theft argument doesn't make sense, I agree - ABD+ license is permissive.
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2012
  13. Wild Hunter

    Wild Hunter Former Poster

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    That's a better explanation.
     
  14. mattdocs12345

    mattdocs12345 Registered Member

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    Testing ABE... ABP has been giving me trouble on Palemoon.
     
  15. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    I use the subscriptions easylist,Fanboys ad list and malware domains.
    These ok or should i be adding others.?:)
     
  16. guest

    guest Guest

    ""Hilarious really. It will be dead soon enough, if it even gains any traction.""

    I don't think so, this add-on has been around for a while now and I also use it,
    my opinion on it is that it is a AD-BLOCKER not a AD-PROMITTOR and that is what the program is for and being I like small footprints as far as software goes the useless addition of a check box to promit ad's is just bloat
     
  17. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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  18. 0strodamus

    0strodamus Registered Member

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  19. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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  20. chrcol

    chrcol Registered Member

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    I tried this and the browser felt no faster, plus it had very similiar ram usage. So I switched back to ABP as I also started getting buggy browsing.
     
  21. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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  22. rpsgc

    rpsgc Registered Member

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    One year later it has more than 400.000 users.


    Or is it still in danger of being "dead soon enough", hmm?
     
  23. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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    Adblock Edge is now part of the Free Software Foundation PRISM Collection:
    http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Collection:PRISM
     
  24. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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    Update: Adblock Edge 2.0.8
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/
     
  25. dead bolt

    dead bolt Registered Member

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    i switched to Adblock Edge because i'm too lazy to click checkboxes installed across multiple firefox profiles maintained for self and family members. i have computers with multiple firefox profiles and several portable installations. i use Adblock Edge with backup/restore of subscriptions to enable quick adblocking installs. just less to think about when maintaining firefox profiles. work smarter, not harder. never experienced a problem with edge.
     
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